8 States team up to support Electric Vehicles

California, New York and six other states said on Thursday that they would work jointly to adopt a range of measures, including encouraging more charging stations and changing building codes, to make it easier to own an electric car.

If it there were more infrastructure would you consider an electric car?

Replies to This Discussion

Thanks for your advise to minimize the home charger costs and charging the battery on a home off peak electric utility rate....

Mindy Kimball said:

To answer the original question - waiting for charging infrastructure is only a problem if you are going to push the range to the MAX every day. I have been commuting with my smart electric drive for almost 3 years now (over 25000 miles!), and I can count on one hand the number of times I actually NEEDED a public charger. 99.9% of my charging has been at home, with my own charger, and has cost me a grand total of about $300.

Public charging is expensive, too. If you expect EV owners to use public charging enough to justify the installation expenses of thousands of stations, then you have the economics backwards. If I charged those 25000 miles all on public chargers (whose fees are $1/hr in most places), it would have cost me about $2000 !!! Still about half of what I would have paid in gasoline to drive that many miles, but about 6 times as much as paying for electrons through my power company (and at night when I am at "super-off-peak" prices, and choosing a renewable energy grid mix).

There are many factors in choosing an EV - first and foremost being availability... get those smarts in all 50 states!!! Then, if your commute is right for it, do it now. It's right for me, and I LOVE IT!

P.S. When I got my first smart electric drive (January 2011), I really thought that I would just do that one lease and then I would switch to a different electric car. But, here I am with a new 2013 smart electric drive. It grew on me, it's fun, it's affordable, and it's perfect (for me). It'll be perfect for about 90% of the commuters out on the roads in the USA too - regardless of charging infrastructure...